ROLE OF WOMEN IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

This research titled "role of women in economic development of Pakistan" provides information about the importance of role of women in economic development.
It contains a lot of information about the state of education and employment of women in Pakistan. Also evidence about discrimination and social prejudices based on sex has been presented. A detailed review of educational status and opportunities for females in Pakistan gives all Instructive picture.
Uneducated and Unskilled women serving mostly as unpaid family helpers remain denied of their rightful place in society. The need to provide greater education opportunities to girls has accelerated as a result of convergence of numerous contributing factors. Note worthy and major among these are.
Continuing high rate of fertility and urbanization. Vast acceleration and spaced of new knowledge and technologies, and various economic social. political and cultural developments culminating in rising expectations and changing values and priorities of women.
The purpose of the thesis is to examine the role and statue of women with in the strategies and instrumentality of development in Pakistan.
The four central questions underlying this study are:-
a) What is the present condition of women regarding education and employment. .
b) To what extant and at what level did women participate in Economic Development efforts in Pakistan.
c) How did this participation of women contribute to the relative success of economic development efforts in the country.
d) How education and employment among women can be popularized.
The implication of these cultural norms for women's economic activities are severe. These shape the perception of Pakistan's women who rarely consider their own tasks and activities as either essential 01' economically significant.
In reality. women are an integral part of the economic process of the country. within and outside their homes, in the formal and informal sectors. in urban and rural areas.
The refined LFPR for the female population reported by the LFS is 12 percent. Independent assessments put the FLFPR at closer to 20-30 percent of full time workers and a greater number of part-time workers. The vast majority, 72.2 percent of women are agricultural workers. Manufacturing represents 13 percent of the female labour force and community, personal and social services comprising a further 11 percent. Women's participation in all other sectors is minor.
Rural -women are major contributors in four sub-sectors of the rural economy, crop production, livestock production, cottage industry, household and family maintenance activities, such as transporting water, fuel and fodder to and from the home, food preparation and preservation and caring for children, the elderly and the disabled women make up 76 percent of all part-time workers and only 25 percent of those acknowledged as full-time workers. Female workers are more likely to be full-time workers in all farm sizes in NWFP (89.54%) and Sindh (74,36%). Punjab shows an almost equal division between full-time workers (55.6%) and part-time workers, while in Balochistan 82.84 percent of female family workers are part-time.
An estimated two million women are part of the informal urban labour force as home-based workers (piece-rate workers, family business, self-employed entrepreneurs) and these working outside the house (in manufacturing, as construction workers, in domestic services, and as vendors).
The informal sector is characterized by low levels of education and skills, lack of capital resources, lower incomes and high degree of segregation. Women, constrained by seclusion norms, lack of information about market forces and are dependent upon contractors and middle persons, are exploited and remain outside of protective legislation.
That women participate in Economic productive activities in rural and urban areas, both within and outside the house, is now an established fact. However, they face a variety at constraints, the major ones being seclusion and mobility, which prevent women's access to information, training skills, credit and opportunities. As a result women's work continues to be arduous and tedious and their potential productivity remains unrealized, concomitantly, their quality of life is abysmally sub-standard.
Some .measures to rectify such a situations are to. Improving data on women's economic participation, and increasing the proportion of women in education. Increasing rural incomes and productivity. Enhancing urban incomes and productivity